I am imagining a small episode: A foreigner owns land
in Brazil
and is surprised at finding a termite hill on some corner of his property.
Since he is a friend of good order, he instinctively dislikes any knobby,
suspicious and useless outgrowth or protuberance. So, he has the termite hill
razed, the fleeing insects killed, and those obstinately remaining in the
crater buried with new dirt. Once this is accomplished he feels happy and
victorious.

Days later, he finds another hill being formed
elsewhere on the property: sur­prise, fury, a new operation to raze the
unexpected and unaesthetic knob. Identical persecution of the
termites.A new "victory," a new euphoria.

But our foreigner asks himself if both ugly phenomena
do not have a common cause. As his eyes cover the considerable distance between
the two sites, he finds nothing that could link one hill to the other, and
utters a sigh of relief. There was nothing. And how could there have been
something between two termite hills so far apart?

The problem is that, besides being a foreigner unaware
of the mysterious world of termites and hills, he did not perceive that
termites have wings and thus can build new nests at considerable distances from
their homes.

* * *

For decades I have been an enthusiast of the idea of
our Luso-American coun­try having increasingly closer
ties to its Hispano-American neighbors and, as the most practical and immediate
step, closer relationships among the Iberian peoples of South
America. Within my own scope of action I have worked
untiringly for this. The evidence of this is the growth of the TFPs in nine
South American na­tions. I do not say ten because we have no TFP in Paraguay. This is
enough to show how much I love and respect these sister nations.

So, without going over the Falklands War issue, I
simply call to mind that communist action, cunningly working its way into the
field of Argentina's international interests, suddenly appeared in the
deceitful form of an offer of military aid. At the same time the little,
home-grown, extreme leftist groups which had been so persecuted and held back
until now, began to appear in collusions in the Casa Rosada
and in prominent foreign assignments. If the Argentine public, enlightened by
two lucid and skillfully written communiqués of the Argentine TFP, had not
bravely rejected communist collaboration, the country's modest communist
termite colony would have swollen unrestrainedly and attempted to change the
whole nation into a gigantic termite hill.

To what extremes could things have gone as a result of
the fact that Argentina's
old and most appealing claim over the Falklands
was abruptly revived by the Galtieri regime precisely at the moment that
internal and external circumstances gave Russia the best
opportunity to make a gain?

But, to say the least, Russia came out
of the episode like a pickpocket caught with his hand in his victim's pocket,
that is, in the very act of intervening in a South American nation through
internal and external pressures, moved by its ideological expansionism.

Is it possible that, already during the crisis over
the islands on the Beagle channel, the communists were looking for an
opportunity to start an all out war between Argentina and Chile and apply to
that military situation a maneuver similar to the one used in the Falkland
case: offering arms to one of the belligerent parties in exchange for succulent
political advantages for the local communist party, in order to prepare the
coming of communism during the war?

The first case — the first termite hill — would then
have appeared on one of the islands in the Antarctic Ocean, followed soon after
by another in an Archipelago in the same general area. The hypothesis does have
its consistency.

However, in this case it is indispensable not to
discard yet another hypothesis consistent with the previous one. Diplomatic
tension is increasing between Venezuela and
former English Guyana on account of old and also appealing claims of Caracas over the territory of Essequibo.

The Georgetown
government, the weaker of the two and admittedly Marxist, has already asked for
the help of "Cuba."
That is, Russia.
And it also counts on the support of Brazil, which
has interests related to a highway our country is helping Guyana build in
the oil-rich territory
of Essequibo.

But it happens that Colombia, in turn,
has territorial claims against Venezuela. The
conquest of Essequibo,
some sectors in Bogotá allege, would disturb the balance of power in the
region. So, if Venezuela
attacks Guyana,
Colombia
will probably revive its claim against Venezuela. This
would be a beautiful opportunity for Peru to revive
its border dispute with Ecuador.
Above all, it would be an excellent opportunity for Russia to
intervene in each conflict with the scheme that failed in the Falklands
case only by a slim margin.

Would it not be that Moscow is behind all this to
aggravate, embitter and infect the quarrels between neighboring peoples, who
could so well resolve them in a peaceful way, or postpone them until better
days?

In Itamarati (the Ministry of Foreign Relations) I see
one of those most beautiful and glorious institutions of which our country has
very few. So I hope with all my heart that Itamarati will know how to see the
problem as a whole, and not merely the rights and interests of Brazil in the Essequibo
highway. If our country remains inflexibly aloof from the dispute between Guyana and Venezuela and
accepts only some kind of conciliatory role, it might be decisive in keeping
peace in the area and preventing the communist "termite hills" from
growing dangerously throughout South
America.

It is worth running the risk of so many dangers just
because of the... Essequibo highway?

Someone might ask, what connection can there possibly
be between trouble spots so far apart as the Falklands
and Essequibo? This is
the same question asked by our foreigner, unaware that the inhabitants of
termite hills fly when it comes to establishing new colonies.

If there is a connection between Moscow and Havana, and between Moscow and the Antarctic
Ocean, why can there not be one between the Antarctic
Ocean and the Caribbean?